1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of electronic commerce, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for ensuring data consistency amongst a plurality of disparate computing systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
The pervasiveness of the Internet has allowed companies to exploit electronic communications to engage in what is commonly known as e-Business activities with their customers. E-business involves conducting business on the Internet and not only includes buying and selling goods and services, but can also include servicing customers and collaborating with business partners. To accommodate this vast range of activities, companies utilize a variety of channels for interacting with Web sites that offer e-Business activities.
A channel is a particular communication medium or a logical medium that can be used to offer a subset of activities, the conglomeration of which form the e-Business activity. For example, a channel for providing book reviews can be a subset of book selling activities in a book selling e-Business. Each channel can support various modes of access. For example, a book review channel can provide modes of access to the book selling e-Business activity through Web browsers and wireless devices such as wireless telephones and personal digital assistants (PDA's). Notably, as demand for e-Business activities increases, so does the need to provide additional channels to accommodate a variety of e-Business activities.
A large number of vendor products have been developed to provide additional channels that can accommodate a variety of e-Business activities. Many vendor products can support one or more limited channels and are typically targeted towards specialized activities within a particular industry. Still, in order to diversify the number of channels available for providing a variety of activities, a company has to purchase, install and operate multiple vendor application products. Diversification is eminent since no singular vendor product provides a complete solution capable of supporting all the e-Business activities within a particular industry.
These vendor products have typically been developed independent of other vendors and in a piecemeal fashion to meet existing customer demand. These vendor solutions which are independently developed for supporting different channels and which have different architectures are called “disparate systems.” Significantly, disparate systems make it very difficult to integrate diversified e-Business solutions.
Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown an exemplary conventional disparate e-Business solution having a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The CRM system can be a suite of products that can be used to provide the infrastructure necessary for implementing channel diversification for supporting customer related activities. The CRM system 100 that can be used for identification, acquisition, and retention of customers. The CRM system 100 can include application vendor products 135, 140, 145 and 150. Each of the application vendor products 135, 140, 145 and 150 can have an associated database 160, 170, 180 and 190 respectively. Also, each of the application vendor support products 135, 140, 145 and 150 can have one or more access points (service access point) 105, 110, 115, 120, 125 and 130 for the channels offered by the e-Business system.
The application vendor support products 135, 140, 145 and 150 can supply CRM functionality to the e-Business solution by supplying a platform for offering services through one or more access point. For example, application vendor product Web/Kiosk support 135 can provide CRM functions through a web browser 105 and a kiosk 110 respectively. Application vendor product WAP/PDA support 140 can provide CRM functions through a PDA 115 and a WAP enabled phones 120 respectively. Application vendor product call center support 145 can provide CRM functions through a call center 125. Application vendor product email support 150 can provide CRM functions through an email channel 130. The application vendor product can include a computer, software necessary to provide the services offered by the channel, and associated databases. The databases can act as a repository for stored information such as customer records and transaction information.
While the databases 160, 170, 180 and 190 can contain information about individual customers, no method exists to ensure that information is consistent amongst the various databases 160, 170, 180, 190 of the corresponding application vendor products 135, 140, 145, 150, respectively. If a customer contacts the call center and changes their address, the old address would still be reflected in the other application vendor product databases. For example, if a customer's address is changed in database 160 by application vendor product 135, the database 170, 180, 190 will not reflect this change. Hence, application vendor products 140, 145, 150 will not have updated values of the address for that customer.
Notably, even though the application vendor products, 135, 140, 145, 150 each supply CRM functionality to the e-Business solution, none of the application vendor products by itself, provides the full range of CRM support desired nor does each support the full range of channels desired. As a result, there will always be some database supporting a vendor application product that does not have the corresponding address change. Accordingly, a need arises to ensure data consistency amongst the databases 160, 170, 180 and 190.
Typically, the greater the number of channels, the greater the number of disparate systems that have to be integrated to support diversification and hence, the greater the problems associated with data consistency. Many attempts have been made to solve the problem of data consistency that occurs with disparate systems. One attempt includes utilizing an e-Business solution from a single vendor. Utilizing an e-Business solution from a single vendor ensures data consistency since all products used to implement the e-Business solution is compatible with each other and can freely exchange data. Another attempt includes utilizing a standardized system in which the components can be fully integrated. Notwithstanding, in reality, there are no single vendors and standards available that can provide an e-Business solution having adequate channel diversity necessary to meet the growing demands. Hence, there exists a need to provide a method and system to ensure data consistency between these disparate systems used to provide adequate channel diversity.